Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Amid Salary Cap Mayhem, Stars Assign Vincour

Forward Tomas Vincour was assigned to the Texas Stars today from Dallas after playing in the team's first three regular season games. Vincour was assigned more as a cap move than as a result of his play on the ice.

With Sean Avery coming off the books for Dallas (more info here), Dallas needed salary to get to the cap floor. So, they traded for forward Eric Nystrom from the Minnesota Wild. To maintain their 23-man roster limit, they had to assign someone and Vincour was that casualty.

What does that mean for the Texas roster? It really depends on what the plan is for getting Vincour back into the mix. When Glennie and Tousignant get healthy though and Vincour is still here, you have to assign someone to make sure they continue developing somewhere, even if it isn't Texas. Likely options for that would be guys signed to AHL contracts, not NHL contracts. Among those are Stephen Schultz and Mike Hedden.

Here's the release:

The Dallas Stars announced on Wednesday that the club has assigned forward Tomas Vincour (pronounced Vin-Sore) to the Texas Stars, Dallas’ primary affiliate in the American Hockey League (AHL).

Tomas Vincour, a 6-2, 204-pound forward from Brno, Czech Republic, has appeared in 27 NHL games in his career with Dallas, collecting two points (1 goal, 1 assist). As a rookie in 2010-11, the 20-year old split time between the Texas Stars and the Dallas Stars. In 24 games with Dallas, he scored one goal and set up another. In 44 games with Texas, the right wing scored five goals and totaled 12 points. Dallas drafted Vincour in the fifth round (#129 overall) of the 2009 NHL Entry Draft.

4 comments:

how a player who has no stats on the Texas team makes it to the NHL on a permanent basis over a guy like Colton Sceviour is just stupid. Obviously the organizaion is trying to make this guy succeed even though he is NO WHERE ready by a long shot. clearly the management of the Stars are horrible at not only finding and recognizing talented yound players (think Glennie) but they are are clueless on how to develop them as well. I hope the new ownership cleans house from the GM and coaching stafff of the main club and the TExas Stars as well. Clueless Management + Clueless Player Development = No Stanlley Cup or Calder Cups for a LONG time to come.

Thanks for linking to that other article that actually explained how taking someone off of IR would actually lower our cap hit. I was confused trying to figure out how that could happen. Makes sense now.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out for our Texas Stars. We have a lot of pretty good AHL players now and someone is going to have to get re-assigned and someone is going to be scratched every game. When Glennie and Tousignat both get healthy, it will be even more problematic.

In comment to the poster before me, its not all about stats. Sceviour is not NHL size, Vincour is. Colton is a mid-level AHL player, and without size, is going to have a hard time cracking an NHL roster regularly.

Maybe you weren't at the game on Sunday, but it was a pretty impressive effort by the team and coaching staff. Not sure why you think Texas' staff should be "cleaned out". You have to keep in mind both teams are operating on a bare-bones budget right now. They dont have much to work with.

My point is this, as Phil Esposito once said, if recruiting hockey players were as easy as looking at physicality, scouts would only attend gyms and not hockey games. Vincour has never put up gaudy or even quality number, even at the WHL level while Sceviour has and on a consistant basis. As for the team, the old addage in hockey is a good team makes you look bad and a bad team makes you look good. OKC is a bad team. enough said.

Not every player on any NHL team will put up gaudy numbers. I dont think anyone currently on the Texas Stars will ever put up gaudy numbers in the AHL, let alone the NHL. Many people see more in Vincour's physicality and work ethic than in Sceviour's "European" type game. Dont get me wrong, I think Sceviour has a good spot on the Texas Stars, but a full-time NHLer he will likely never be.